


in absentia

by Windian



Category: Nier Gestalt | Nier
Genre: Body Dysphoria, Discrimination, F/F, I want them to be happy okay, post ending D
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-04
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2018-12-11 03:14:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11705634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Windian/pseuds/Windian
Summary: Every time she visits the little house outside of the village, there's a little less of her. You're horribly afraid that if Kainé keeps going like this, she's going to kill herself.





	1. in absentia

Kainé never stays for long.

It's an easy rhythm the two of you have picked up. Several times a month, your saviour comes to visit with lambs wool, mutton, other materials that while once commonplace have become scarcities as you'd slept away five years, undreaming. She can't be coaxed into a chair, nor into a casual drink. You take care to have food prepared for Kainé's visits, but even then bowls of broth are wolfed down, still standing, and she'll throw a hand over her shoulder with a casual, “Later.” Then she'll be back, a fortnight past, and the same thing will happen all over again. She'll inquire after your health, or ask if you need anything-- you turn down her offers of request down. Kainé's already given you so much.

There's an uneasy space between the two of you that you can't erase. It's the same feeling that strikes you like the twang of a tuning fork when you think back your childhood-- the feeling of _absence_. Not just the years that were plucked away from your fingers, but the feeling that you've forgotten something important. Most of the the time, you can almost push it back. But when Kainé visits, it rises up to the top of the surface. Her entrances are like a whirlwind: she's loud, she's brash; punctuated with a musky aroma, the tell-tale sign of years spent living out in the wilderness. You doubt she bathes regularly. Her lacy under things are sour smelling, clinging to her body, hair matted to her head. “Later,” she says, and after she leaves you find yourself running fingers across the cabinets, the drawers, tracing out the shapes of them. There's a thick feeling sat at the top of your throat, and why is there a second, empty dresser downstairs?

After all, you've always lived alone.

Haven't you?

 

You're stronger now.

Your entire childhood had been punctuated by illness, the awful scrawl that had scratched its way across your skin and into your lungs leaving you breathless, bed bound. Your sleep in the Shadowlord's castle had broken the spell. “Like a princess from a fairytale.” Who had said that? You?

You dig over the garden. You plant potatoes, aubergines, carrots, turnips, bushels of onions. The townspeople give you a good price for them. The barkeep's daughter teaches you a little mending. Your fingers are clumsy at first-- too large, too unwieldy. Your entire body feels like a too-large dress you're told you'll, “grow into.” Sometimes, dressing in the morning, fumbling your buttons, you pause. You gaze at yourself in mirror, at the childish softness of your face transmuted into something more angular and elegant. You run your hands down your curves, testing the unfamiliar weight of your breasts in your hands. Sometimes you catch the men in the village looking at you in a way you've never noticed before.

Kainé doesn’t look at you.

Or else: she tries very hard not to.

 

You practically have to push her down into the seat. “Sit,” you command, over the top of her grumbling.

The sack of goat meat she's brought sits on the table-- you'll have to salt it later, before it turns bad.

The weather is turning colder. Kaine's practically skin and bones these days. You ladle out a bowl of broth for her. “Eat,” you say, and she gazes at you with her cheek in her palm.

“What am I, your new pet pup?”

“Just eat it,” you tell her.

Eventually, Kainé eats. “This tastes like shit,” she says.

You've learned not to take Kaine's vulgarities personally. There have been times when you've wondered why the woman has come to visit you at all, but, after all, she still comes. She still rescued you from the Shadowlord's castle, even if she still refuses to divulge why. You've long come to the conclusion that Kainé is not the goody-goody _saving-people_ kind of person. Which, presumably means that in some, strange kind of Kainé way, behind the insults, she holds a kind of fondness for you.

“You should feel lucky,” you tell her. “When I was younger, I used to burn everything I made.” You'd had little choice but to improve. After all, there was no Devola or Popola to cook for you. Not any more. And no--

The feeling of a gramophone, skipping. Not that you've ever seen one, but _she_ had--

“Hey,” you say, softly, “did you ever find out any clues about what happened to Devola or Popola?”

For a moment, you imagine Kaine's eyes darken.

“I guess this broth's not too bad. Compared to the trash I usually eat, at least.”

From Kainé, it's as close to a compliment as you can get.

A smile lights up your face. “I'm glad.”

Her eyes twitch up to look at you, linger, just for a moment. “Tch.”

 

“Where are you sleeping, these days?” you ask Kainé, a fortnight later-- the wool and herbs she brought on the counter-- before she can scurry out of the door. Outside, it's pouring. The rain drips from Kaine's nose, from her drenched hair. She seems obvious to it.

“You know. Here, there. Wherever.”

“Do you like it?”

“I'm used to it,” says Kainé.

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

She pauses in her escape. Her mouth quirks up in something resembling a smile. “Alright, smart ass.”

“You could stay here, you know.” There's frost on the ground most days now. “It must be cold out.”

For a moment, her eyes roam over the cosy little house. Slowly she says, “I don't think that's a good idea.”

You dig your heels in. “Why not?”

For once, she stops skirting around the issue and looks at you. “Yonah, I'm not a good person. If you knew some of the things I've done, you wouldn't be so keen to share a roof with me.”

Her eyes are deep and dark, and something inside you shivers to be directly under their gaze.

“Then just for tonight,” you say. “It's pouring out, Kainé. You're soaked. I was going to pour a bath. We could get the fire going.”

“I'm fine,” she says.

“You'll catch a cold, acting like this.”

Her eyes say, _so what?_

“Do you have any regard for your health whatsoever?”

Kainé shrugs. It's infuriating, watching her pour her life out little by little. Skinnier every time she visits, her hair and clothes in rags. For years you'd watched your life go by from the confides of your bedroom, and Kainé _throws_ it away, like it's nothing.

Just as she begins to stand, her face already turned towards the door, you slam your hand against the table. _Bam_.

“You're not leaving, Kaine. Not until this rain stops.”

Your authoritarian voice wavers in the middle, but still, Kainé hesitates. She puts her ass back down on the stool. She almost sounds impressed when she replies, “Alright.”

“And you're taking a bath, too. You reek.”

Kaine's nose pinches in surprise. She lifts up her arm to smell her pits. “Smells fine to me.”

“That's because you've been living in the trash for weeks. I'll boil the kettle for the bath. We can take turns.”

She straightens. If she had fur, you think it would prickle.

“I can bathe in the lake.”

“There's plenty of water for us both.”

“That's not the issue.” She exhales a frustrated breath. “Look, I'm not used to being around other people, OK?”

It makes you smile, to think that for Kaine's brashness, her revealing outfits, the girl is in fact secretly very shy.

You strike a compromise: Kainé heads back into the rain down to the lake, but she takes a generous slab of soap and pumice stone with her.

While she's gone, you fill up the tin bath. It's a laborious task, hauling out the old tin bathtub in front of the fire, stoking the coals, drawing the water from the well. You're sweating by the time you slip into the tub, and you've only began to lather yourself when the door slams open and Kainé comes back, dripping from head to toe. Her skin is so scrubbed clean it shines pink, and she seems to have washed her lingerie-- still sad and discoloured, it's a lot cleaner-- though you really ought to lend her some of your clothes.

Her eyes widen when she sees you in the tub, and she makes to march back out into the rain again before you stop her.

“I've got the fire going. You should come warm up.”

Kainé hesitates, but her eyes fix on the inviting warmth of the fire. Eventually, she gives up and takes a seat on the fire-warmed flagstones in the hearth, back resting against the bathtub.

“Isn't this much nicer than spending the evening under some soggy sad bridge?” you ask, and she makes a non-committal noise. You think about splashing some water on her, but decide your floor's probably wet enough. There's something that niggles at you...

“Hey. I've got something I want to ask you."

"What?" her voice is suspicious.

"You said you lost five years when you were petrified, didn't you Kainé?” you ask her.

“Oh. Yeah. That was a thing.”

“When you woke up, did you feel...” under the water, you press your legs together. They're so _long._ “Did you feel... different?”

You can't see Kaine's face, only the back of her head as she brushes a soggy lock of hair from her eyes. “Not especially,” she says, though she amends, “although I did have a lot of unpleasant dreams. That sucked ass.”

“Oh.” Your curl your toes together: it feels like watching someone else. “So you never felt as though... your body is not really yours?”

Kainé goes silent. Nothing but the sound of the leaking roof. The sound of rain.

“I'm sorry,” you say, speaking too fast, “I know that probably doesn’t make any sense. I just--”

“All the time,” says Kainé, and your breath hitches. There's a softness, a kind of vulnerability you've not heard before from Kainé, and it makes you lift out of the water. She still has her back to you, and you wish you could see her _face_ \--

Her back, however, stays resolutely facing you. Her hair, untied from it's long loop, reaches past her waist.

“Hey, can I play with your hair?” you ask, and she looks at you _then_ , a baffled eyebrow raised, as if to say, _you want to what_? “Please? I used to love it when someone played with mine when I was little.”

That _someone_ alludes you right now, but you don't dwell on it.

“Fine,” she sighs, as though you're placing a tremendous burden on her. You ignore this, and get to work. Kainé leans back against the bathtub, looking as comfortable as a raccoon on the verge of bolting, though she quickly begins to melt when you pull your fingers through her hair. When you ask her to pass the comb on the dresser so you can tease out the knots, she's almost loathe to let go of your touch. You'd never dare ask, but you can't help but wonder if anyone has ever touched Kainé like this, if she's ever allowed herself to be touched.

Something tight lodges in your chest.

When you finally set the comb down on the side of the bath, Kainé lets go of a long shuddery breath.

“Rain's stopped,” she says.

“Yeah. Sounds like it,” you say, listening to the last few raindrops splashing in the bucket, slowing like a heartbeat.

Despite that, tonight, Kainé decides to stay.

 


	2. laundry day

Despite yourself, you find yourself going back, again and again.

With each visit, the village in the valley gets poorer. Faces get leaner, smiles downturned. Invariably, some new victim of the scrawl is dragged out to be buried in the mass graves past the village gates. There's little ceremony, these days. Too many shades, and cleverer now than they ever were before. Fear is a powerful thing.

Despite that, Yonah keeps smiling. Her blue eyes never lose their lustre, even when the sun bleaches the rest of the colour from her hair and draws swathes of freckles on her unmarked skin. Her soft hands turn rough and calloused from the soap she uses for the laundry, but Yonah tells you she likes them better that way, even if the soap sometimes causes her knuckles to crack and bleed. “I was never able to do anything as a child,” she tells you. “I hated it, being a burden like that.”

It makes you think of the day in the Shadowlord's castle. You'd cut your way through hundreds of shades, fuelled by your unquenchable own hatred and anger, all the way to the heart of the palace, to strike down the Shadowlord himself. Yonah had been there, in a place where no living being should have survived. An oasis in a parched desert, kind eyes in a sea of cold impartial strangers-- Yonah's always been an anomaly.

 

When you cleave through the last shade in one final push, the thing falls part with a shriek and a shower of blood. It catches you full in the face. You find yourself panting, hair clinging sweatily to the back of your head as you spit the taste of copper from your mouth.

“Fucking shades.”

The killing isn't as easy without Tyrann. Not just because of the jumped-up shade power boost, but the _bloodlust_ that Tyrann had brought with him. Which isn't to say you still don't enjoy the euphoria of the fight, but your blood no longer sings for murder, of the sheer joy of killing.

You collapse back on the ground, breathing hard. The world's been quiet, ever since the Shadowlord's castle.

In some weird, fucked-up kind of way, you can't help but miss the bastard.

You don't go to Yonah that day.

 

Humans have short memories.

Despite having helped save the town from the ugly rampaging shade that nearly smashed their little village into matchstick, the villagers are wary of you. As you carry the large wicker basket full of laundry down the stream, you can feel their eyes on you, can almost feel the ghosts of their whispers on the back of your neck.

You're used to it. Yonah, however, isn't, and despite laden down with a pile of laundry she clumsily links arms with you. She pushes out her jaw, meeting any curious eyes with a lancing gaze that quickly sends the townspeople back to their own tasks.

“We don't have to do this, if you don't want to,” you say. You don't give a damn what any of these people think of you. Fuck 'em. It's Yonah you're thinking of.

“No,” she says, and she squeezes your arm, tight.

 

Yonah lathers the clothes in her old tin laundry bucket, before rubbing them raw on the old washing rock half way down the stream. She rinses them, and then there's your favourite part-- she smacks the loosened dirt of them on the rock. Absolutely goes to town on them, working out all her frustrations on the poor scraps of clothes. Her uneasiness with her own skin-- which you know, all too well-- still creeps back, occasionally, in stillness. You catch her studying her reflection in the mirror, flexing her fingers, pulling a face, as though to check the woman is the mirror is still _her._ Those reservations seem to melt away on days like this one, when she's active, moving, alive.

She also refuses to let you help, which leaves you dipping your toes aimlessly in the water between the rushes, staring down men who look Yonah's way too long.

Her dress is hoisted up around her waist, secured with a length of cord. Dozens of laundry days have burnished her pale legs a healthy tan. It's hot, and Yonah works up a sweat. Her hair, tied up out of the way on her head is beginning to spill out. When she leans down, it cascades over her shoulder, exposing the still-pale square of skin on the back of her neck. An absent thought scoops over the water like a mayfly: the thought of kissing her there, on that square of skin, right on the nape of Yonah's neck.

 

 

 


	3. playing house

Kainé moves into the little house by the river, and puts down roots both in the village and in your heart.

She makes a good living hunting, and picking up various other odd dangerous jobs for the townspeople that set your pulse racing in worry. Despite that, the townspeople do not welcome her. She weathers their distrust with the cold, unmoving force of a mountain in the rain.

“You don't have to put up with it,” you say, as the tail end of a vicious whisper blows through you like a cold draft. You don't know Kainé stands it, how she lets it wash over her, water over rock. You can't.

But Kainé, ever explosive, lays dormant. Stone. Puts a hand on your head.

“I'm used to it,” she says.

 _But you shouldn't have to be_ , is what you don't say.

 

It depresses you. In your childhood, the village people were nothing but kind. What has Kainé done to earn their disdain? Worse: what has been done to her that she bears it, almost meekly? Kainé, who is loud and brash and never meek.

At least, until they begin to talk about you, too.

 

You exchange the basket of clean laundry for the normal handful of coppers; enough to buy a loaf of bread and some cheese. Kainé will catch the fish for supper. The baker's daughter, Emma, always gives you pint of milk for free. Real stuff, from an actual goat.

Emma hesitates, however, as she packages up your shopping in brown paper.

“Yohah, um.... that woman you live with...”

“Kainé,” you say, automatic, as you shift your laundry basket under your arm to make room for your shopping.

“Kainé,” Emma corrects herself. “Are you... safe, living with her?”

It gives you pause. _Safe_ is not the word you'd use to describe Kainé, but... “Of course. She's my friend. She'd never hurt me.” The answer is as easy as breathing. For all her coarseness; in her dress, in her speech, when the two of you are alone that rough exterior often gives way to an unexpected tenderness. “Why do you ask?”

“Well, it's just I heard she punched out old man Koin earlier.”

“She _what_? Why?”

Emma bites down on her lip. “I think... he said something to her.”

 _No shit_ , is what Kainé would have replied.

“Said what?”

“I think you should ask her,” Emma says, lips pressed tightly together.

You take your shopping and move to leave when the girl takes a step forward, hand at your elbow. “Yonah, are you and Kainé... really just friends?”

“What else would we be?” you ask, but Emma closes up like a clam once again. She lets her hand drop.

“Um. I think it might be best if Kainé doesn’t come into town for a bit.”

Before you go, you make sure to leave the pint of milk on the counter.

 

Kainé is bandaging her hand when you return home. It's her dominant hand she's injured, and she works at it clumsily, letting out a steady stream of profanity.

“Let me help,” you say, and she's made such a mess of it that begrudgingly, she lets you kneel down in front of the crackle of the fireplace as you start afresh.

“Accident,” Kainé says, by way of explanation.

“With old man Koin's face?” you ask. Kainé tenses.

“You've been in town,” she says. You nod.

“Fuckin' marvellous.”

“Emma told me he'd said something to upset you. What was it?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Kainé says. She rests her chin on the back of her hand, staring resolutely out of the window.

“I'm not a child you have to protect, Kainé. I want to now what's going on.”

When she keeps ignoring you, you pull the bandage tight-- perhaps a little too tightly.

“If you don't tell me, I'll just find out from Emma, anyway.”

“Anyone ever told you that you can be a real brat sometimes?” Kainé asks.

You stand, dusting the ash from the fireplace from off your dress. “I don't know. Has anyone ever said you can be a real bitch?”

There's a small quirk at the corners of Kainé's mouth. “I've lost count how many.” She finally looks at you, if only to nitpick at the dust on your dress. “You've got some on the back, too. We'll have to sweep out the fireplace sometime soon.”

“We do, but we're not talking about the fireplace right now.”

Kainé goes back to staring anywhere but you, and just when you think you're never going to get anything out of her, she admits, “Fine. He asked if we were... living as husband and wife.”

“That's---” very much not what you expected.

It was true that you cook for Kainé, that you wash and comb her hair, but it's not as though you share the same bed. Kainé was resolute on that, preferring to bed down on the furs downstairs.

“Anyway. I decked him one.”

When you manage to speak, you say, “Well, that's kind of an overreaction.”

“That's because I gave you the polite version of what he said.”

“Which was...?”

“God, Yonah.” She finally meets your eyes, and her jaw is tight, her eyes pained. “He asked if I was fucking you, okay? Are you happy now?”

“Oh,” you say.

Your face fills with colour, and if you didn't know better you'd think Kainé is embarrassed as well, which is an entirely new feat. In a mutter she asks, “Do you... know what that means?”

“Of course!” you reply, although you're not sure you do. Not really.

Kainé looks as doubtful as you feel, and you rub your hands together, for friction, for any kind of distraction, as you murmur, “I know... it's something you do with the person you love, anyway.”

“Sometimes,” Kainé replies, and you can feel her pulling away from you.

Sometimes, Kainé becomes very distant.

She sits at the windowsill, looks out. The little house becomes much longer, and your fingers tangle into a cat's cradle of anxiety, a lump lodged in your throat.

Sometimes, even still, Kainé feels like a stranger. The space between you might as well be an ocean.

Kainé does not scare you. But this? This silence, this endless feeling of distance? It terrifies you. You worry that one day, staring into that cold place that you can't reach, she might never come back.

“Kainé,” you say, around the lump as large as a plum pit in your throat. “Have you ever loved anyone?”

“You know, I think maybe I did.” When she speaks, her voice is uncommonly soft and gentle.

“Maybe?”

“I don't really remember,” she admits. “I must have forgotten, which is a pretty fuckin' stupid thing to forget.”

“Your 'special' something?”

She grunts an affirmative.

You remember the conversation well. Kainé had woken you up from your sleep in the Shadowlord's castle. In waking, you'd lost something precious. Kainé spoke of it, too. Something that had been lost from the world. You'd ended up taking her hand-- whether it was because of your mutual grief, or something else, you still don't really know. And you kept holding on.

To cross the few steps dividing you is to step barefoot across baking sand. You lean down, closing your arms around Kainé, pressing your face to the top of her head.

I know, you want to tell her, I know, I know, I know.

She stiffens under your touch, but only briefly. Like the tide coming back in, Kainé comes back to you. The cold distance in her eyes fades, the tide washes the water in over the sands. With one hand, tentative, almost shy, she reaches up to cover yours. When you tremble, she squeezes tight, until you still under her touch.

Despite everything, you keep holding on.

 


End file.
